It’s Cookie Day! Or, the story of why my body is trying to kill me.

Ok, so I kind of love cookies … not quite as much as I love cupcakes, but my adoration for the glory of tiny cakes just for me is a story for another day.

On the average day around here, we don’t have cookies. There are a number of reasons, probably. First, mass manufactured cookies taste like garbage for the grand most part. Second, those little tokens of sugary delight you can pluck off the grocery store shelves are filled with probably 18, 723 more chemicals, additives, and known carcinogens than any ‘food’ product ever should. Third, I’m really cheap … meaning, I don’t like to spend money on food that isn’t food or necessary for survival or amazingly impossible to resist. Fourth, and worst of all, although I have some badass (if I do say so my darn self) baking skills, I’m … uh … lazy. Who wants to slave over a hot oven in hot pink kitten heels when there’s a world to save and things to kvetch about on the internet?!

Not I.

So, to remedy this cookie (and assorted other deliciousness) shortage, we hold an annual affair of ultimate baking (read: slave labor) in the days leading up to Christmas. I mean, everyone can eat garbage once a year, right? (I surely hope so, because I’ve all but turned this December into “National Eat Garbage for an Entire Month”) Every year we drag out the stand mixer, the beaters, the cookie racks, and a ridiculous assortment of baking gadgets and craft the most amazing (or possibly good by default since we … uh … have a shortage the rest of the year) selection of confectionery dreams. Even Willy Wonka’s dentist himself would cringe at the piles of cavity inducing goodness covering my dining room table right now.

In the course of the day we created no less than 328,098 (ok, maybe a slight exaggeration) kinds of pure insulin necessitating ambrosia (the food of the g-ds, not the scary marshmallow salad thing). The list includes … can you even imagine …

It’s not all sweets, sure, but it’s almost all stuff we don’t make regularly and most definitely all things I’m not supposed to eat. Did I mention December is “National Eat Garbage for 30 Straight Days” month? Yea, it’s also, “Em Should Fall So Hard Off the Gluten Free Wagon She Cracks Open Her Bread Deprived Skull on a Combine” month. That’s right, cookie baking girl, the one who dedicates an entire DAY to trying to find new and interesting ways to use refined sugar and wheat flour, isn’t supposed to eat GLUTEN. I write it like that, because that’s how it sounds in my head, (deep voice, yelling) “GLUE-TEEEEN” like the man behind the curtain in the land of Oz or an otherwise ominous cinematic warning voice.

I really am trying to stop caving for cake (and bread, and brownies, and french bread, and pita … ooooooh, pita). I even had all these great GLUTEN free cookie recipes to try out so I wouldn’t have to suffer while the rest of my family gobbled handfuls of baked goods like deprived monkeys. I.just.couldn’t.do.it, Captain. It’s Christmas! It’s Cookie Day! It’s not the end of the world, right?

My current aching gut, unending heartburn, and totally zapped energy level disagree. It’s probably time for another cookie … for quality control’s sake … you know, for altruistic science. I wouldn’t want my family to end up poisoned. Or something